Inevitable result

Given the degeneration of the San Diego Unified School District since a new board majority took power in January, Superintendent Terry Grier's decision to leave San Diego Unified after less than two years here comes as no surprise.

Grier will make more money and have a higher national profile running the Houston school system. But insiders say that's not why the respected reformer is leaving. Instead, it's because in Houston, Grier actually will be able to focus on fixing schools — not on pleasing the local teachers union and its labor allies.

As far as San Diego Education Association boss Camille Zombro is concerned, the district's 130,000-plus students are little more than props necessary to receive state funding for a union jobs program. Board members Shelia Jackson, Richard Barrera and John Lee Evans — elected with heavy union support last fall — share Zombro's extreme views.

This is evident in how the board majority has dealt with the two biggest issues to come before it this year: the implementation of Proposition S, the $2.1 billion construction and renovation bond approved by voters last fall, and the crafting of a 2009-10 budget.

With Proposition S, Jackson, Barrera and Evans forced through a “project labor agreement” requiring the use of union labor on most bond-funded projects and mandating that non-union workers pay union fees.

In the 2008 campaign for the bond, plans for such a union payoff were never mentioned. The board majority adopted the PLA before it had been subject to even cursory independent scrutiny by either district staff or members of the bond oversight committee.

The certain result, based on the history of PLAs, is that far less will be done with the $2.1 billion bond than was promised to taxpayers.

With the budget, Jackson, Barrera and Evans dealt with a huge deficit by enforcing a protect-teachers-above-all-else stance unique to San Diego Unified.

Teacher pay and benefits are such a large portion of school budgets that responsible boards inevitably turn to layoffs in times of big revenue drops. But in San Diego, over Grier's advice, the board majority chose to skimp on everything else — maintenance, textbooks, classroom teaching tools, field trips, you name it — while leaving teachers unscathed.

Yet even as her takeover of San Diego Unified appears complete, Zombro is not satisfied. She is demanding the board adopt a ludicrous “maintenance of standards” agreement giving the teachers union de facto veto power over vast swaths of school policy.

No wonder Grier wanted out even after recent good news on student test scores. The gains can't last with Jackson, Barrera and Evans outsourcing control of the district to Zombro and treating Grier as an apparatchik to be bullied.

We hope Grier changes his mind and decides to stay on at San Diego Unified. But given what he is up against, he may feel he has no choice but to leave.

If only that were a realistic option for all the students of San Diego Unified.